Eden St Friends Burial Ground

Date: 1814 to 1952
Location: Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

This page is part of the Surrey Cemeteries Team.

See the:

• Eden St Friends Burial Ground category for people buried in this burial ground.

Eden Street Friends Burial Ground was a Quaker cemetery in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. It was the second one in this area - the earlier one, in Norbiton Street, was in use between 1664 and 1814, and had been sold in 1922, and more recently has been excavated by archaeologists.

Eden Street, in turn, was in use between 1814 and 1952; it was behind the Meeting House. Eventually the local Quakers decided to sell the Meeting House and have a new one built. In 2010 the human remains were moved from Eden Street Burial Ground to Surbiton Cemetery, where they are marked with a single memorial stone. Six of the headstones from the Eden Street Burial Ground were moved to the garden of the new Meeting House in Fairfield East as decoration; others were left at the old location, which was still awaiting demolition and redevelopment as of 2015. However it appears that redevelopment has proceeded since, and another body which it seems hadn't been mentioned in the burial register was discovered and moved to join the others in Surbiton.

Although the article about the body discovered during redevelopment mentions that one of the bodies mentioned in the register hadn't been located in 2010, it was thought this couldn't be the new body found, because it wasn't in the right area. This logic seems somewhat flawed - a single clerical mistake in recording what area a body was buried in would seem more plausible than the double mystery of a missing body in one area plus an unexplained and unrecorded body in another - but possibly there was more evidence to back the theory up than is mentioned in the brief article.

Sources:

• Excavation of the Norbiton St Burial Ground
• History of Kingston Friends, Meeting Houses and Burial Grounds
• Discovery of another burial at the Eden Street site